


D.Gray-Man: Half is Better Than None

by Harukami



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-16
Updated: 2012-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-05 18:08:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/409427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harukami/pseuds/Harukami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A thing that should never have been written: the love story of Kanda Yu and Alma Karma's dismembered but still very active torso. I'm sorry.</p>
<p>Originally posted Jan 2012</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Carrying On

Kanda holds him tight, arms wrapped around his crumbling form, waiting for the end to come -- for the last breath to be gone for good, for the dark matter to swallow Alma's soul finally and that woman's along with it. It isn't what he wants, but what he wants doesn't matter here. It doesn't matter anymore.

If he dreamed of a miracle, it would be that Alma would pass and his soul would still survive. That was the best Kanda could imagine in this scenario.

Instead, something else happens: Alma's skin strengthens, and softens somewhat, and Alma draws a hitching breath in and looks up at him with horrified blue eyes and says,

"I don't think I'm dying?"

They look at each other for a long few moments. It's definite: Alma isn't getting any deader. "...Are you sure you don't want me to use my Innocence?" Kanda offers, eventually.

"No! You don't need to -- you don't need to live with that again, Yuu," Alma says, tone a bit raw, embarrassingly honest for him. And then, "I'm sure the dark matter will run its course any minute now."

They wait, sand pouring down around them. Alma shifts to get more comfortable in Kanda's arms by hauling himself up a bit, teeth ringing the bottom of his ribcage pressed against Kanda's thighs.

"Any minute now," Alma repeats, forcefully, as if trying to remind the dark matter that it's got a job to do.

"Look, just live already," Kanda says, watching crumbling pillars instead of the distinctively no-longer-crumbling Alma. "You fucking moron, I don't even know why I was being part of this fucking melodrama."

"Eh, but--"

"You're living with me and that's final!" Kanda snaps. "If you're not dying suck it up and live, you useless waste of space!"

Alma makes faces at him. "Yuuuuuuu," he protests. Then, self-mocking, "Fine. Okay, I'll live with what I did. Every day, that punishment."

"Drama queen."

"Asshole!"

"Crybaby!"

Alma punches Kanda. Kanda punches back, which is a little unfair because when Alma's torso goes flying there isn't really any way for Alma to catch himself, but "Unfair" is Kanda Yuu's middle name.

So Alma flops into the sand, and Alma makes whiny noises and spits sand from his mouth and rolls awkwardly and Kanda looks at this scene -- the dismembered Alma, upper half of his body only and trailing off in the upper jaw of some hideous monstrous mouth, nothing at all below. Crying to himself like the idiot he is. Alive after all that. And despite himself Kanda laughs.

"...Eh?" Alma pushes himself up on his elbows, staring, eyes wide. He always had beautiful eyes.

Kanda looks away, mouth a tight line in his face. "Let's just wait until you regrow your lower half, and then we can figure out what to do."

They wait, both of them flopped back in the sand. And they wait. And they _wait_.

"Yuu?"

"..."

"Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuu. Yuuuuuuuuuu--"

"What?"

"...I don't think it's regrowing."

***

Eventually, they have to move on, because waiting days for Alma to regrow the _entire lower half of his body_ is reaching the point of absurdity. It's not happening. They both have to just admit it. His body cuts off at that bizarre crazy akuma mouth, the roof of that upper jaw forming a solid surface at the bottom of his torso. And that's that. He heals relatively well otherwise; he's still hardened somewhat but the fragility recedes. Plus, Kanda is hungry, and cranky, and he knows full well there's a city nearby.

"How am I going to go with you? Yuuuu!"

"Shut up, stop talking," Kanda mutters, and buttscootches around so his back faces Alma. "Just grab on."

"There is no way you can explain this to anyone."

" _Grab on already!_ "

***

The first thing he does once he's managed to shut up all the horrified people who saw him carrying half a living torso into town, and after he breaks them both out of jail, is buy a cloak. If he keeps the hood up, and if Alma holds on tight underneath this clothes, it mostly just looks like he's carrying a pack under there as he moves on, as they move to new cities and keep on the run so the Black Order can't find them.

It is, however, the noisiest pack in the universe.

"Yuu, it's too warm. It's too warm, Yuu. Yuu, you work out, wow, your muscles are really nice. Yuu, my back itches, I need to scratch it."

"Shut up before I kill you."

"Yuuuu I can't see where we're going, it's making me motion sick. I'm going to throw uuuuup!"

" _You don't have a stomach._ "

"Yuuuu let me shift my grip, hold still--"

"HNG!"

"Oh that's a nipple."

"Watch your fucking claws! I'm going to fucking break your hands off at the wrist!"

Alma considers that for a bit. "No," he says. "I definitely would whine about that. I would whine about that constantly."

Kanda thinks he might be going insane.

***

Still, they travel like this for months, living hand-to-mouth, Alma getting relatively good at hand-walking his torso around when they're in situations to do so. Kanda looks into getting him a proper chair, but it's too unmanageable when they're on the run, so instead he carries Alma whenever he needs to, and Alma more or less gets by when they're shut in their rooms together.

"This is nice," Alma ventures, finally. He's hauled himself up to a windowsill and gazes out at the town beyond, lit by the overly bright moon. "Considering everything."

"Considering everything," Kanda agrees.

Alma glances back over his shoulder, eyes bright, smile on the more manic side -- but it's been that way a while now. "Are we ever going to talk about that?"

"About what."

"Me," Alma says. "Us. Inside me."

"No," Kanda says. "I don't think so."

"Haha," Alma says. "Yeah."

***

Alma's a nightmare to share rooms with if Kanda wants a good night's sleep -- not because he's too energetic, because he actually does tend to quiet down, get silent and just watch Kanda sleep; Kanda is used to falling asleep with the weight of Alma's gaze on him, and waking up to the same.

It's just that it gets harder and harder to avoid that sense that maybe things are okay, and maybe he can be happy. There's a war going on, but it's hard to care, with the weight of that gaze on him, day in, and day out. Night in, night out.

"Shut up," Kanda says one morning, eyes still closed.

"--Eh? I wasn't saying anything. I definitely didn't! I was talking in my head but I wasn't saying anything aloud. -- Yuu, are you psychic now? Have you become psychic?! That's so cool!"

"I could hear the way you looked at me," Kanda says.

Alma is silent, and Kanda thinks about how stupid it sounds, what he just said.

"Sorry," Alma says, and when Kanda looks at him, he's smiling to himself, small and sad, and has lifted himself onto his palms, hauling himself over to the broken-out window of the abandoned church they're staying in now.

"You aren't sorry."

"I am," Alma says. "I'm really sorry."

"Why?"

"I love you, Yuu," Alma says, and attempts to fling himself out the window.

Kanda catches him before he's all the way out, grabs him around the chest and tries to haul back. Alma grabs onto the window frame and whines loudly.

"OW! Yuu, rough! Too rough! Ow!"

"Shut your fucking face!"

"Yuuuuu!"

"Don't you run out after saying that," Kanda says.

Alma tilts his head back, soft hair feathering against Kanda's neck. "I thought you might not want to answer me."

"I don't."

"So?!"

"So I won't answer you! You don't need to defenestrate yourself -- oh, fuck you, never mind, fling yourself out the window if you want to."

But Alma doesn't. He levers himself down instead, scootches over to a corner and sticks himself in there to watch Kanda. Kanda doesn't look at him, goes about brushing his hair and mutters to himself angrily. It's better than the alternative.

***

Another month and they haven't talked about it, but it's not very well like Kanda can think about anything else, is it? Even now, the middle of the night, while they are on the run from the Order, with Alma bouncing up and down on his back, arms wrapped hard around Kanda and mouth almost against his ear.

So when Alma uses that blatantly-inappropriate time to lean forward and mutter, "Do you ever get lonely?" Kanda is sort of at a loss to answer, and also looking for a place to escape to, and stays silent.

He finds it by accident when he slips on some loose tiles on a rooftop, slips, crashes through the old cracked ground legs first, and from there into the sewers -- fortunately landing on the path instead of in the water, but the smell is atrocious and he also breaks both legs.

"Oh," Alma says. "Oh, that didn't sound very good, Yuu."

Kanda growls instead of answering, lets Alma pull away since they both have to drag themselves anyway, and hauls himself into a side branch of the sewer. He doesn't hear the sound of pursuit, miraculously, so he reaches down with his teeth gritted to try to straighten his own legs.

"I'll do it," Alma says, grabs onto a pipe with one arm, and with the other hauls Kanda's legs back into proper position.

Kanda swallows any noise he might make, including thanks, but nods when they're set, waits for them to heal. Alma moves over, nails scratching rat-like against the stone, and tucks himself in against Kanda's side.

"Sometimes," Kanda says.

"Eh?"

"Nothing."

"Sometimes what? I don't get it. Yuuuu! Make sense, Yuu! Come on, Yuu, explain--"

They might be pursued, Alma's voice might draw attention, they're alone down here, the two of them and the end of the world, and the so-called good guys are after them as much as the bad guys are, and he kisses Alma.

It is not what anyone would consider the most romantic first kiss in the world, in the stench of the sewers, messy, Kanda's hair tangled, muck smearing Alma's face where Kanda's hands are cupping it, on the run with both of Kanda's legs broken. But it's a first kiss, and then it's a second one, and a third one.

Alma winds his arms around Kanda and holds on like he's a lifeline, torso twisted, hardened tooth-remains digging into one of Kanda's legs agonizingly as he braces himself to hold on, arms trembling, mouth trembling, tears dripping down and sliding warm under Kanda's fingers and Kanda thinks there are worse ways to learn to kiss than this, over and over again, breathlessly, completely unable to breathe until finally he has to pull back, look at Alma's tear-streaked face, see the shaking curve of his smile.

"Are we--" Alma begins.

"Of course," Kanda says. "Of course we are."

They stare at each other.

"Even though it's going to be blowjob week like forever?" Alma asks, hesitantly.

Kanda stares at Alma in growing disbelief.

"Because I don't have anything below the waist, I mean, and--"

"Shut up," Kanda says. "Shut up shut up shut up, I don't care, you're perfect, I hate you, you suck."

He kisses him again, and basically, everything's okay.


	2. Making Do

Obviously, now that Alma said something like that, something about _blowjobs_ , sex is a big unspoken thing between them. Like that's necessary, Kanda thinks, aggravated, like that should have ever come up, and the one time he snapped at Alma about it, Alma had the gall to point out that Kanda was the one who'd kissed _him_.

"I don't even know where you come up with these things," Kanda grouses. "What the hell is a blowjob week?"

Alma looks over at him with bright eyes that reflect the moonlight. The two of them are hiding out in the ruins of an old castle on a hill; Kanda has stolen vegetables and fresh bread from a town they passed through on the way here. He chews the latter angrily.

"I think it's when a girl is ... you know. When it's _occupied_ down there. So only the mouth is -- Um?"

That suddenly makes a lot more sense. "Where did you even hear that?"

"I used to go and listen to Dr. Tui and Dr. Edgar a lot," Alma says.

"Never even mind." Kanda eyes him blackly.

Alma laughs, and says, "I would, though."

"Shut up," Kanda says. "Just stop talking."

That night, it's chilly and Kanda doesn't care and Alma doesn't care, but Kanda pulls Alma close anyway and holds him. Alma wraps an arm around him a bit hesitantly, tucks his face in against Kanda's neck. Kanda can feel the fluttering warmth of Alma's breath and thinks it's a lot easier like this. Not thinking about anything. Just living day to day.

He falls asleep before Alma and wakes up after him -- wakes up to find Alma watching him through half-closed eyes, eyelashes trembling slightly, the glimpse of pale blue-gray underneath showing him Alma's gaze.

Kanda grunts wordlessly at him.

"Ah! Good morning, good morning," Alma says. "You're holding me so tight, Yuu."

Closing his eyes again, contemplating going back to sleep, Kanda loosens his arms.

Alma is motionless for a little longer, still pressed close, and then he tucks his face into Kanda's neck once more. Kanda thinks perhaps they will sleep again, but Alma's lips are moving against his throat, a soft, almost shy kiss, dry.

He makes a little noise, and Alma laughs uncertainly and does it again. "Yuu," he breathes. "Yuu, Yuu."

Kanda keeps his eyes closed, doesn't really respond.

It isn't easy for Alma to squirm down, the way he is; he has to unwrap his arms from Kanda, reach down to the uneven bricks they've more or less cleared to make a nest in, and haul himself backwards. So his movement is abrupt, not subtle in the slightest, as he slides down.

In all honesty, Kanda is more embarrassed than actually resistant; he keeps his eyes closed shut, breathes shallowly. This isn't something he's done. This is barely something he's considered. He's barely even touched himself -- maybe once every few months at most, brisk and annoyed at himself wanting it. But Alma is here and in his arms and now that he's slid down more, Alma is squirming onto his side to touch Kanda's chest, his stomach.

"I don't," Alma begins, soft and abrupt and uncertain. He laughs, quiet, quieter. "I don't know what I'm doing."

Of course, Kanda thinks, while he's had nine years of several-months-apart angry self-touching, Alma has been frozen, asleep. He missed all those embarrassing, humiliating teenage experiences where bodies take action on their own (for no good fucking reason). He missed every irritable moment of do-I-or-don't-I. Alma had a short childhood, and then Alma had nothing, and then Alma has had just this.

"Stop it, then," Kanda says, rough, eyes still closed. "I don't want it."

"I'd like to try," Alma says.

Kanda's breath hitches and he tangles one hand into Alma's hair.

Alma makes a soft, almost surprised noise at that, then laughs again, says, "Yuu. Yuu, Yuu..." and his fingers tease up under Kanda's shirt, brush his stomach, slide up.

Sharpened nails brush lightly over Kanda's nipples, tease them rough, spend time there, toying. Kanda can feel the heat radiating from Alma's cheeks, can feel the rough breaths he himself is letting out, feels arousal curling in his stomach, lower, deep and humiliating. He pretends it's not, pretends he's just lying there with his eyes closed, pretends his voice hasn't gone hoarse as he breathes.

Pretends the sound of his zipper getting pulled down isn't so loud.

Alma's tongue traces a pattern on his stomach, and hot fingers reach down to wrap around Kanda's dick and pull it out. "Yuu," he says, and he sounds almost strangled, his tone practically unreadable with the force of whatever reaction he's having, god knows what that is, it's Alma, it could be anything. He almost sounds on the edge of tears, desperately needy, and Kanda thinks,

_Reciprocate._

He reaches out slowly, slides his hands down Alma's back, reaches the place below his ribcage where his body vanishes into teeth. He freezes up as the tip of Alma's hot tongue touches the end of his cock.

 _Reciprocate?_ He thinks, and shoves Alma away, almost rolling him. That's impossible, though, Alma the way he is. A one-sided, selfish, unnecessary sexual relationship? That doesn't appeal.

Alma cries out, catches himself on his palms, looks up at Kanda with red cheeks and tears in his eyes and a deeply irritated look on his face. "Wha-- Yuu, what?! Why-??"

"Stop doing useless things," Kanda snaps, and gets up, hurriedly tucking himself away, zipping up, and, before Alma can give him another of those _looks_ , he climbs the crumbling parapet to go sit at the top.

He barely has a few moments up there before he hears the plaintive whining.

"Yuuuu....! Yuuuuuuu, Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu! Why did you leave, Yuuuu, are you mad?? Stop that, come down here!"

Kanda ignores Alma with more strength of will than he would have thought he'd ever need to exercise in ignoring someone instead of just punching them in the face.

"Yuu! Seriously, though, come back here -- stop it, this is really annoying, Yuu! Yuuu!!!"

Patience, Kanda thinks. Alma will give up and go cry in a corner soon enough.

But no, although the cries from below stop, that's not the end of it.

_Thump thump_

_drag_

_Thump thump_

_drag_

In disbelief, Kanda peers over the edge. Sure enough, there's Alma, attempting to scale the parapet with his hands alone.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he yells down.

"That's my line!"

"You're going to fall and die!"

"No, I won't!"

"Yes, you will," Kanda says, and throws a brick down at him.

A yelp. Successful hit, then. Kanda allows himself a faint smirk.

_Thump thump_

_drag_

He's seriously still coming. Kanda glares over the edge at him. "There's something wrong with you."

"Yes, I like _you_!"

Kanda nods after a moment, acknowledging the point. Below, Alma has his teeth gritted in outrage and determination; his cheeks are still red, and tears have gathered at the corners of his eyes. For a moment, he looks so much like his childhood self that it's almost unnerving.

Shaking his head to himself, Kanda jumps down, flies down past where Alma's upper body is clinging firmly to the wall, and lands.

"...No fair!" Alma yelps. "Yuu! Climbing down is harder than climbing up!"

"Let go. I'll catch you," Kanda tells him.

"You threw a rock at me!"

Kanda repeats, "I'll catch you," with exaggerated patience.

Alma looks down at him with a stubborn, puffy-cheeked face, then closes his eyes, pushes himself away from the wall, and falls. Kanda catches him under the arms, holds him there briefly to let him get his bearings, and puts him carefully down.

Bracing himself on his hands, Alma moves back a bit, twisting to look sulkily up at him. "Are you done being stupid now?"

"Who's stupid?" Kanda snaps, already regretting coming down. He should have waited until Alma was at the top before jumping. "You're the stupid one."

"How'm I stupid? Yuu!"

"You can't get off. Sex is pointless. Let's not bother," Kanda says, flat, flinging the words out angrily to keep from making himself more embarrassed.

Alma sort of stares at him, then laughs, and drags himself back to their sleeping corner, and laughs again.

"...You laughed twice," Kanda says, trying to decide how angry to get.

"I don't care," Alma says. "I don't care about that. None of that, I don't care about it, Yuu. I just want to hear how you sound. I just want to see how you look. I love you. You're so dumb."

"I'm leaving," Kanda snaps, and grabs his bag and sword.

That doesn't seem to change anything, the look on Alma's face still bright, and soft, and both sad and amused. "Yuu."

"I'll get more supplies." They really only get what they need when they need it, these days.

"You're dumb, Yuu."

"Like I need to hear that from you!" Kanda snarls, and heads off.

He spends a few hours out there, and, at least as good as his word, resupplies, and gets himself a new hair ribbon (which is basically the same thing), as well as keeping an ear out for news. He doesn't hear anything of note, which is as good as hearing good news.

When he comes back, Alma is curled in the corner, his arms wrapped around himself, head tucked in. If a stranger were to come up here -- and why would they -- there's a good chance they'd never notice him, barely the size of a child the way he is now, and dusty and grubby enough to nearly blend in. For a moment, Kanda thinks Alma's sleeping, but as he watches, Alma lifts his head and looks at him.

"You're back," Alma says, and his voice is plaintive.

It almost makes Kanda feel bad. He puts his belongings down. "I'm back," he agrees.

"I just love you," Alma says. "I just love you."

"Yeah," Kanda says, and sits next to him, and pulls Alma into his arms. Alma settles, teeth at the bottom of his ribcage bracing on Kanda's legs.

Alma's tense, smiling. "Didn't you say we are?"

"We are," Kanda agrees. "But--"

"Then--"

Kanda drops his head to Alma's forehead and breathes. "I'm not just going to take from you," he mutters.

"I'm the one," Alma says. "I'm the one who's taking from you with this."

"That doesn't even make sense."

"It would make-" Alma begins, and shuts up.

Kanda waits, mentally recites names to call him for how hard this conversation is. "Make what?"

"Never mind. Never mind, Yuu."

It's a little harder than necessary when he clunks his head into Alma's again. "Just answer the goddamn question!"

"Ow! Yuu! Stop it, stop it!"

"Please," Kanda says, breath gusting out slowly. "Please."

Alma makes a small choked noise, painful. "It would... make me happy..."

"Something like this would?"

"Stop it, I feel too selfish."

"That's not my fault," Kanda says. "I don't understand you." He tucks some of Alma's hair carefully behind a pointed ear.

Alma gives him a shaky smile. "Well, that's Yuu's problem--"

"Hey, hey," Kanda protests. He touches Alma's mouth, carefully, with his fingertips.

Parting his lips, Alma says, "We don't have to, but I want to."

"Like I know how to say no to you," Kanda says.

Alma laughs, and tears up a little again, and says, "Is that okay? That isn't even okay, Yuu," and, "It's just, Yuu, I just want to be with you in every way I can."

Kanda kisses him, and drags his fingers through Alma's hair, and Alma tangles his fingers into Kanda's, and kisses back.

They kiss, and they kiss, and they kiss, until Kanda feels like he can't breathe and is pretty down with that. They kiss in the same way they'd suck breaths of air in after first reviving. They kiss like it felt the way it felt when pain would fade from their body.

"Yuu," Alma breathes. "Yuu."

He's hard again after all, hard with Alma's hands wandering over his body. He traces his own fingers down the hard knobs of Alma's spine, up over the front of that damaged torso, earns a laugh and a bit of a gasp, earns the way Alma's eyes heat up and his lips part and he flushes oddly, cheeks and lips and nose. Stupid fucking upturned flushed nose.

"Yuu, I want. I want, I want... I want..."

"Yeah," Kanda says. He unzips himself, takes himself out with a hiss of air between his teeth, puts Alma's hand around him, and swallows hard at the look that crosses Alma's face, at the feel of Alma's dry rough hand, not quite the texture of normal human skin, not quite there at all. Doesn't matter; it's still Alma. Alma shudders, looking down at them, at his own body, cut off above the waist; at Kanda's long, slender form.

Despite himself, Kanda feels himself blushing as Alma drinks in his dick with his eyes, and hopes Alma won't notice. But Alma's gaze is tilted down, watching himself as his hand slowly works on Kanda's cock, as he moves it slowly, getting the feel for the first time, really, figuring out a rhythm hesitantly, then faster, bolder, wrist twisting a little, working him, thumb rubbing at the head.

"Fuck," Kanda says, head knocking back into the crumbled stone wall behind himself. "Ah..."

"Oh," Alma says, and now he is staring at Kanda's face, but he doesn't seem to have a single teasing word to say about the flush there, his eyes wide, so wide, watching his face, watching him as his hand works harder and faster and it won't be long. It's never been long. Kanda's had no need or desire for stamina before.

Kanda forces his eyes open, forces his head forward enough to meet Alma's gaze. "I," he says, tongue a little thick in his mouth, and comes.

It hits him hard and sweet and satisfying, throbbing through him in a rush, and he watches his come spatter up across Alma's stomach to his chest. It's almost fascinating. Alma slows, lets go of Kanda's dick -- it flops down, stains his pants, good fucking job, Alma, he almost swears, but can't seem to get his mouth open properly to do so.

"Oh," Alma says again, and lifts a slick hand to his mouth, tongue flickering out to taste his fingers. "Yes. Yes, please. I like this. Yuu, I like this a lot."

This is as far as it goes, Kanda thinks, this is sex. This is what sex will be like. It's a bit of a half-measure, but then, that's suitable, isn't it? Under the circumstances.

"You have," Kanda says breathlessly, "horrible taste."


End file.
